How diplomacy changed Korea’s fate — and its future

Liberation came in 1945. Sovereignty — and with it, the authority to speak and act abroad in Korea’s own name — did not. Three years later, a Korean government delegation went to Paris to ask the United Nations to recognize the Republic of Korea. The fledgling state had a flag and a government, but neither a seat nor a vote at the UN. It would take another 43 years for South Korea to become a full UN member in 1991. Eighty years after liberation, a South Korean president presided over a 2025 mee